Let's begin where anyone's relationship with a new telly starts: the design. Our set, the 55in 550LED807, looks quite different to last year's model. For starters, it swaps out the blade-style feet for a centrally mounted, polished chrome 't-bar' desktop stand, which is attractive and raises the TV enough to potentially tuck a soundbar underneath. The finish is somewhat reflective though (not necessarily ideal in a movie room) and very susceptible to fingerprints. The mammoth 77in version of the OLED807 keeps the feet - for obvious reasons while 48in and 65in iterations also get the 't-bar' pedestal.
The set's bezel is significantly narrower than that of the OLED806, which itself was pretty slinky. This is made possible by Philips switching to one of the latest EX type of OLED panels. The frame is so skinny, in fact, that it plays beautifully with Philips' Ambilight system, making the coloured illumination that comes from all four sides feel even more connected with the images you're watching.
The TV gets all the usual Ambilight features, including the ability to track the colours of the picture on the screen; connectivity with a Philips Hue lighting system; and a new Aurora mode that ties Ambilight to a library of still and moving images that you can call up as 'screensavers' when you're not watching the TV in earnest.
Start your engines
As well as aiding the 550LED807's design, Philips' move to an EX OLED panel introduces a brightness boost of as much as 30 per cent over 'regular' OLED screens, and as much as 10 per cent even over previous high-brightness panels. And my experience suggests the potential of this new panel brightness will be unlocked by the latest (sixth) generation of Philips' redoubtable P5 Al picture processing engine, which feeds pictures through a huge, carefully ordered series of 2 processing elements.
This story is from the August 2022 edition of Home Cinema Choice.
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This story is from the August 2022 edition of Home Cinema Choice.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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